11/10/2016, A couple of minutes read.

I’ve recently started to document my endeavours in getting my personalised print business off the ground and generating a bit more revenue. This post is my first attempt at documenting and formalising one of the growth hacks I’m experimenting with. I’ll work to a standardised format when I do write them up and I hope the process might spark more ideas for the future, or even for you the reader.

I’ve already experimented informally with this hack. I’ve previously created two or three segments on Strava that have driven a small amount of traffic to the website. The segments were not on especially busy routes, but they did create mixed reactions. For good or for bad, people publicly tweeted at us…

What’s the hack?

A segment is a section of your run or ride that has an associated public (if you choose) leaderboard for competing against others who pass over it.

Pros of the hack

It’s free.

I can create as many segments as I like (for now 😂).

I can name the segment anything I like (perfect for A/B testing).

Strava users are my target audience.

Cons of the hack

It looks spammy.

URL’s in segment names aren’t clickable on the Strava app or website.

There are 000’s of segments on Strava. Standing out from the crowd will be hard.

Strava users can flag my segments if they don’t like them. This could lead to my account being blocked.

It might be hard getting enough traffic volume from the experiment to prove that an AB test is statistically significant.

The AB test

I will set up segments on two busy routes to start with: London Bridge & Tower Bridge. Each route will have two identical (almost) segments: A & B.

Variant A will have a title of “Sisu - Your exercise data as art!” followed by the shortened Google URL. Variant B will be titled: “Sisu - Is that all you’ve got?”, again followed by a Google shortened URL.

The City of London Corporation is planning major essential maintenance works to Tower Bridge from Saturday 1 October to Friday 30 December 2016.

As a result of the above, I have chosen another route in addition to London Bridge and Tower Bridge to experiment with. I’ve added two running segments to Victoria park, a popular destination near my office that I run myself.

How will I measure the hack’s success?

Google URL shortener will provide me with short urls that I can use in segment names, with viewable (and public) analytics for measuring performance too. It’s a free service.

Caveats

In my attempt to be as informative as possible about my experiment, it’s possible to get hold of the Google shortened URL’s that are in in the titles of the segments. This could quite quickly lead to the downfall of the experiment if they end up being abused online. 😬